In a major report from Belfast this week to mark the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic, the New York Times suggested the citizens of Belfast were suffering from “collective amnesia” regarding the exclusion of Catholics from the Belfast shipyards of old.

In the week in which Orangemen announced their first-ever rally at Stormont, without any protest from nationalists, it might have been thought unionists would react with some decorum to the suggestion that the flag of Ireland be unfurled above Stormont.